How to Run a Basic Health Check on a Connectrix Brocade B-Series Switch

Learn to run a general health check on a Connectrix Brocade Switch. We guide you through the needed commands “chassisshow”, “firmwareshow”, “slotshow” and so on. For initial diagnosis, running the supportshow command will gather the output from a variety of commands. If further investigation is needed, it may become necessary to run a supportsave as it contains the supportshow and additional information for engineering and attach it to the appropriate service request. For more Information, check our Knowledge Base click here.

Hello everyone. In this video, let us learn how to perform a general health check on a Brocade B-Series switch. To verify the switch is EMC supported, run the command “chassisshow”. It provides details about the chassis fan, power supply, switch blade, control processor blade, and WWN Unit.

If it is an EMC supported switch, there are two places to check. First, scroll to the output label WWN Unit: 1 and view the ID field. It should be nine characters long and begin with the letters EMC. Second, the line below is the field serial number. In most of the cases, all EMC supported Brocade B-Series switch serial numbers begin with the letters BRC, but not necessarily. In order to check the Fabric OS version running on the switch, run the command “firmwareshow”.

It displays the Fabric OS versions on primary and secondary partitions of both active and standby CPs. Run the command “fabricshow”. It displays the information about switches in the fabric. In this case, switch 2 is the principal switch. “islshow” command displays the details of ISL link from the switch to peer switches. Here, switch one is ISL to switch 2 and 3 via ports 8 and 24 respectively. “trunkshow” displays the trunking information. “slotshow” command displays the current status of each slot in the system. CP BLADE is a control processor blade. SW BLADE is a switch blade. These are the core blades. UNKNOWN indicates blade is not present or its type is not recognized. “switchshow” command displays the switch blade and port status information. For detailed information about the “slotshow” and “switchshow” commands and their states, refer to the Dell Knowledge Base article number 9644.

Index is a number between zero and the maximum port of the platform. Index is used to identify the port number relative to the switch. Speed indicates the speed of the port. It can be 4Gig, 8Gig, 16Gig, 32Gig or it can also be set to Auto Negotiate (AN). In this example, port number 24 and 25 are in a trunk sharing ISL to switch 3 with port 24 as trunk master. Downstream indicates it is a path away from principal switch of the fabric. Port number 8 is sharing an ISL to switch 2.

It is an upstream path towards the principal switch of the fabric. “porterrshow” command displays an error summary of all the ports. Refer to the following KBs on how to interpret “porterrshow” output. “mapsdb –show” command displays a summary of the events or the rules triggered and the objects on which rules were triggered over a specific period of time. Dashboard information displays the dashboard start time, active policies, configured alerts, fenced P-ports, decommission ports, and de-quarantine ports. Switch Health Report displays the overall status of the switch. Summary report displays the status of the monitoring categories needed to determine the current health of the switch. Rules affecting the health displays the conditions that contributed to the current status of the switch.

In this case, since the switch status is healthy, there are no rules affecting the switch health. “errdump” command displays the external error log messages for all switch instances and the chassis. The errors are logged chronologically from top to bottom, oldest to newest. “hashow” command displays the information about the status of high availability feature on the switch or HA status. HA state synchronized means the switch is currently fully synchronized.

If a failover becomes necessary, it would be non-disruptive. If HA state is not in sync, the system is unable to synchronize the two CPs. For initial diagnosis, running the “supportshow” command will gather the output from a variety of commands. If further investigation is needed, it may become necessary to run a supportsave as it contains the support show and additional information needed by the technical support team to investigate an issue.

Thank you for watching.